1 PROSPECT The nowhere neighbourhood London is building a new district where no local can afford to live wendell steavenson

here haven’t been elm trees in Nine Elms, in south encompasses not only the power station site but a giant swathe west London, for 300 years. When the railway of the Borough of Wandsworth and part of neighbouring Lam- reached the south bank of the Thames at Batter- beth. The numbers are huge: £15bn of investment, 25 different sea in 1838, the area was a swamp dotted with wind- sites to be built over 25 years, 16 developers, 16,000 new homes, mills. By the end of the 19th century, when Charles 25,000 new jobs and over half a million square metres of mixed TBooth mapped the socio-economic classes of London, the area use development. There will be office blocks, residential towers, was industrial, and included a coal wharf, a saw mill, gasworks and a redeveloped New Covent Garden Market. “London’s Diplo- and coke works. A few tenement streets were marked in black matic Quarter” proclaim the advertising posters around the moat which, according to Booth’s categorisations, designated “the low- of the new American Embassy, a shiny cube covered with an exo- est class, vicious, semi-criminal.” skeleton of halberd-shaped spike-arcs. The Dutch Embassy is On the A-Z London map from 2000, there are no longer any also relocating south of the river and the Chinese are apparently residential streets in the area. Instead there are only the brown interested in moving from their gloomy Portland Place mansion. outlines of HM Stationery Office, New Covent Garden Market, There will be two new tube stations along a Northern Line exten- a Sorting Office and Battersea Power Station (disused). Two sion. There are even plans for a footbridge across the river to Pim- access roads end in a beige unmarked territory, as if there were lico (although Pimlicans are up in arms). Nine Elms is the largest nothing there at all. development in London and when it’s done, the capital will have Recently I cycled along Nine Elms Lane through grit sprayed filled a wasteland with a whole new neighbourhood. It will take a up by the cement trucks grinding past. It is a noisy place of metal generation to build. thunderclaps and jack-hammer drilling. Muddy builders in fluo- After almost a century of urban sprawl towards the home coun- rescent yellow vests man temporary traffic lights and cranes loom ties, London is turning back again to face the river and rediscover- over the plywood construction hoardings. Among all this building ing its canals—no longer moving out but moving back in. Moving work still stands the famous silhouette of Battersea Power Sta- east, there is a new “International Quarter” around the Olym- tion, its four 103-metre chimneys in various stages of destruction pic Park in Stratford, a new postcode, N1C, at King’s Cross, and and reconstruction. “London’s Emerging Cultural District” is rising out of abandoned The 40 acres of the old power station development are the docklands on the Greenwich Peninsular. The artists’ impressions centrepiece of the vast Nine Elms “Opportunity Area,” which of what to expect describe clean and modern lines, green lozenges of lawn, glass balconies with a bicycle and a café table for two. The architecture cuts new lines through the Victorian-Georgian ter- races of London, just as it is doing in Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh.

But most people cannot afford to live in this shiny new Wendell Steavenson is a writer and journalist future. In the midst of this dynamic upthrust is the sense of an PROSPECT THE NOWHERE NEIGHBOURHOOD 2

uncomfortable paradox, one that is especially evident in Lon- mark against their name for living in a council house. Now if you don. That these new developments are investment opportuni- are brought up on an estate you’re immediately assumed to be on ties for overseas buyers who do not live in them. And thousands Benefits Street.” of them are being built in the middle of a city that’s at the centre A property-owning class was created in the 1980s by privatisa- of a national housing crisis. tion. Belton told me that in Wandsworth about a third of the sold- off council homes were now privately rented. (That seems to be ony Belton moved to Wandsworth in the mid-1960s the figure across London; and inevitably a number of those prop- because, he said, “it was incredibly cheap.” Back erties are rented back to the council.) It used to be, Belton said, then there were still tanneries and factories along the that none of his fellow Labour councillors would have owned more Thames. “Filthy. Stinking. I remember a thing called than their own house, but now, “I am amazed how many of us are Tthe ‘Battersea smell.’” He smiled and admitted he was prob- landlords. It’s almost immoral.” ably part of the first wave of gentrification, “the new genera- The windfall from council house sales went to central govern- tion of university graduates, looking for places to live.” When ment. It then cut local government housing grants and reduced Belton was elected as a Labour councillor in 1971, the borough councils’ ability to borrow, which slowed the construction of pub- was “rock-solid Labour.” As the decade wore on and factories lic housing. Over the past quarter of a century, London’s popula- continued to close, Labour lost ground and the Conservatives tion has increased by two million to 8.6m, almost as many as the took over in 1978. They’ve held power ever since. In 1979, when 1939 all-time high. But little new public housing has been built by Thatcher entered No 10, Wandsworth had 40,000 council prop- councils since the 1980s, while the number of private new builds erties. Over the next few years, under her government’s right- has remained consistent. The job of providing social housing has to-buy policy, 18,000 of them were sold at a discount to council been devolved to housing associations. tenants. I met Belton in his Victorian house off Clapham High When Ken Livingstone was elected mayor in 2000, things Street. He is still a Wandsworth councillor, friendly and some- changed. He said London was an important global city; we should what rueful. I asked him about the effect of right-to-buy, two be looking to New York and Shanghai, not Manchester or Paris. generations later. He urged a rethink of planning regulations and an open attitude “Social, economic. It’s the whole gamut,” he said, tilting his to more ambitious projects—the Shard, for example. Livingstone head. “When I started in politics Macmillan was prime minis- wanted to build a new London, but he had almost no money. The ter. Council housing was the solution to the post-war housing cri- Treasury is highly centralised so that London controls only 7 per sis. There was so much of it back then that no one had a black cent of all taxes paid by residents and businesses compared to over 50 per cent in New York and 77 per cent in Tokyo. The way for- ward, Livingstone believed, was to get private developers to build public housing. They would be encouraged by liberalised plan- ning regulations and the scope of a city-wide “London Plan,” and in return their projects would include a proportion of affordable homes. (The term “affordable” is slippery—it tends to indicate homes where rent is pegged to the median borough income.) Each planning application would be negotiated by councils on its indi- vidual merits, rather than regulatory templates, and the Greater London Authority (GLA) would coordinate the big picture.

“In the midst of this dynamic, kinetic, upthrust is the sense of an

© MIKE KEMP/GETTY IMAGES © MIKE KEMP/GETTY uncomfortable paradox” 3 THE NOWHERE NEIGHBOURHOOD PROSPECT

attersea Power Station was decommissioned in 1983. For 30 years successive owners, developers and archi- tects drew up plans for the site—a theme park, a shop- ping centre, Chelsea Football Club’s new stadium—but Bthe costs of preserving the crumbling, iconic Grade II-listed land- mark scared them all away. In 2012 the site was sold to a Malaysian Consortium consisting of two huge developers and a pension fund. Gordon Adams, Head of Planning for the site, told me: “There are a lot of people working on the project who were here under the previous owners and when you ask them: ‘Is there a difference between them and the new owners?’ they say, ‘No, the master plan was fine, it was just that they didn’t have enough zeros.’” Adams and I met in the site headquarters, which is housed in a hand- some left-over brick Victorian building (soon to be demolished) overlooking the giant hole into the Northern Line extension and another giant hole into the Thames Tideway shaft, London’s new super-sewer. “There hasn’t been a development of so much square footage as this one since Canary Wharf,” he told me. “The original developers of Canary Wharf went bust,” I said. But it was hard not to be swept up in his enthusiasm. Starchi- tects Frank Gehry and Norman Foster have designed buildings that will flank the old power station and face each other across a curvy street that will be called Electric Boulevard. A sliver of park along the river will extend and open the Thames pathway to the public. The power station itself will be mostly filled with office space (Apple UK has announced a lease) with penthouses on the

top floors. A lift in one chimney will take people up to a viewing JOHN / ALAMYSTOCK PHOTO © BENJAMIN platform. At the main entrance to the power station is an oval ser- The new US Embassy. Dutch and Chinese diplomats may also move ried plaza named Malaysia Square, the design of which recalls the to the Nine Elms neighbourhood famous caves in Gunung Mulu National Park in Malaysia. “The owners wanted to put their stamp on the project,” said Adams. 106 for the power station site, a wad of bound documentation. “I Several of London’s big developments are sited on the large carry it with me. It’s my bible.” plots of disused land around railway hubs. But the sites are stuck With his first London Plan, Livingstone aimed for an aver- with the same problem that rendered them black on Booth’s pov- age proportion of 50 per cent affordable housing on new devel- erty maps: they are cut off into cul-de-sacs by rail lines. These opments. But then, in 2008, Boris Johnson became Mayor. He urban islands isolate their inhabitants and historically have been was faced with the banking crisis and a bevy of nervy develop- incredibly resistant to gentrification. ers who wanted to renegotiate their Section 106s and revise the So I asked Adams about access. He pointed to two roads lead- affordable housing percentages down. Peter Bishop, professor ing into the site for buses and taxis, although “cars would be dis- of Urban Design at University College, London, ran Design for couraged,” and a pedestrian tunnel through one of the railway London at the GLA under Livingstone. Under Johnson, Bishop arches to Battersea Park on the other side. I asked about shops. He told me, “it was a free market free-for-all. When Simon Milton, said they were going to put high-end independent retailers into the the mayoral advisor on planning, died in 2011, there was a huge railway arches along the viaduct, including branches of local del- increase in development, in the density and in building heights.” icatessens and grocers, a florist and a bakery called Flour Power. Leonie Cooper, a Labour councillor for Wandsworth and a Lon- He pointed out a small shape on a green strip that would be a com- don Assembly member who sits on the Housing Committee munity hub/library and said that one of the railway arches would and is Chair of the Environment Committee, told me: “Gener- be given over as a community centre. I was surprised that much ally Ken used to push applications back to councils saying, get of the site was not yet really planned. On the maps, phases five, more affordable housing in here; Boris not so much.” Develop- six and seven were putative grey rhomboids. “That’s all 2025...” he ers I spoke with also agreed with this characterisation. In 2015 said. “There is some talk of a hospital.” there were 47,000 units under construction (double the number What about the affordable housing quotient, I asked. Adams in 2007) as well as 70 buildings over 20 storeys; planning for over said that because of scheduling complications, the bulk of the 100 more had been approved. affordable units planned—Phases 4A and 4B, which include There are always complications with big developments and almost 400 homes and a health centre—had been moved off site, everyone understands that there needs to be some renegotiation over to the other side of Nine Elms Lane. along the way. However, by considering each project individu- The planning agreement between a local council and a devel- ally, rather than against a universal set of city-wide guidelines, oper is known as a Section 106. This sets out the proportion of the system has become overrun by consultants who rejig devel- affordable housing for the site and the mix of commercial, retail opers’ Section 106s. and residential buildings. It also includes infrastructure obliga- When I talked to Ravi Govindia, the Conservative leader tions like health centres, schools, bus stops, pedestrian plazas, of Wandsworth Council, he explained that developers simply access roads and playgrounds. Adams showed me the Section wouldn’t operate without a profit margin. Councils had to work PROSPECT THE NOWHERE NEIGHBOURHOOD 4 with them, otherwise construction would halt. “Yes, it’s a process priced out of the area and he doesn’t want to move away. I just and yes, it can become very drawn out at times and needs brink- don’t know what to do.” Dikerdem told her: “I know, I live with manship,” he told me. “But what part of life is not? I think it’s my mum too.” Then his friend said, “yeah me too” and then about an honest dialogue between the two.” another friend admitted he was also in the same situation. The As central government grants to local councils continue to woman just started laughing. “This is just crazy, that you guys are decline, Section 106s have become a way for councils to get devel- being held back like this!” opers to pay for infrastructure. Toby Lloyd of Shelter, the hous- After his victory, Dikerdem showed me around the Patmore. ing charity, told me: “Section 106 is essentially a tax on property We went up to a sixth floor walkway and looked out across the development and is a vital source of affordable housing.” A former roofs to the steel and glass giants rising just across Nine Elms developer I talked to said something very similar. “Thirty years Lane and marvelled at their sheer size. “Nine Elms is quite unlike ago the government was building infrastructure and affordable any development London has ever seen; it’s a totally cornered off housing. Now a good proportion of public infrastructure is funded luxury fortress,” he said. “It’s so visually symbolic and obvious. through development, like a development tax.” It’s almost as if they are making it easy to see. The affront. But all The extent to which local councils wring Section 106 obli- these people who live on the Patmore, are looking up at this think- gations out of developers varies greatly. Labour councils tend ing: how do I fit in now, in London?” to try and get more affordable housing. Conservative areas like Wandsworth—where the affordable housing quota applied to he issue of development and housing in London is a most of Nine Elms is only 15 per cent—less so. In Wandsworth, story with many facets. But at its heart is a basic ques- the vast bulk of the money received from the Battersea Power tion: how do we want to live? What kind of city are we Station Development Company, to date just over £38m, is ear- building? The big new developments are creating a new marked to help fund the Northern Line extension. Roughly Tsocio-economic map of London. They are also building a new £5m has gone to pay for schools’ refurbishment and other pro- urban way of life. Instead of individual houses each with a back jects. London is made up of 32 boroughs, each with its own gov- garden and a front door that opens onto the street and streets that erning council and priorities. One developer told me that one meet at corners, there are bigger and bigger apartment blocks set Labour council had been so cash strapped that it had taken in pedestrian precincts. Glass canyon versus Hygge. money instead of asking for housing units. I went to see the architect Graham Stirk, a senior partner at I met Cooper in a pub on Nine Elms Lane. We talked through Rogers, Stirk, Harbour and Partners at their office on the 14th the jigsaw of interlocking Planning Acts and policies, local, city, floor of 122 Leadenhall Street, more commonly referred to as the national. She said that she “quite liked” the ethos of the Malaysian Cheesegrater. Stirk, who designed the Riverlight buildings, one of developers who were trying to create a sense of community, but the few Nine Elms developments that has been completed, grew that of course she wished there were more affordable units. up on a council estate in Leeds. “Wandsworth has a shocking number of people in bed and “I’ve spent my whole life trying to make big things look breakfast accommodation,” she said, which is what happens when smaller,” he told me. “How does one put 860 flats in the middle councils have to provide tenants with emergency accommoda- of this semi-industrial environment and make people want to tion. Not for the first time I heard the complaint that Wandsworth live there?” He described how he had carefully worked out the angle of the sun, and had situated the five buildings perpendicu- lar to the river bank to create sightlines to the river, open-ended “Nine Elms is unlike any “like New York Avenues.” He pointed out the details of colour, shape and perforation, so that “the façade creates depth and not development London has ever a monolithic wall.” seen. It’s a totally cornered We talked about the larger scale of the developments going up in London. Stirk said that big buildings were nothing new for Lon- off luxury fortress” don. John Nash, who built Regent Street and much of Regency London, and Thomas Cubitt, the Victorian master builder respon- Council had benefited politically from an exclusionary housing sible for the creamy monotone of Belgravia and Pimlico, had built system that had created a borough of middle-class Conservative long monolithic terraces and crescents. Stirk said that it was more voters. Cooper said: “They don’t like poor people, they don’t want about good architecture than sheer size. “When I look at Dolphin poor people, and they try and get rid of poor people as a way of Square [the Pimlico apartment complex] for example, it fright- securing their hegemonic rule over Wandsworth.” ens the life out of me,” he said. “It’s like someone parked an air- There is some political pushback. Sadiq Khan became Labour craft carrier.” mayor of London promising to reform housing in the capital The next day I walked around the Riverlight buildings to look and he has announced new London-wide targets of 35 per cent more closely. I appreciated, now that Stirk had explained them affordable housing on new developments. In November, a young to me, the slices of sunlight, the subtle angled recessing of bal- Labour candidate in his 20s, Aydin Dikerdem, won the by-elec- conies, the undulated landscaping, planted with swaying reeds tion in the council ward that encompasses Battersea Power Sta- and accented with red flowers. There were parks and walkways tion. Dikerdem was born in the area and still lives there. One between the buildings, not all accessible. Some required a resi- afternoon when he was out with friends canvassing on the Pat- dent’s keycard to get inside a glass walled enclosure. It was a win- more estate across Nine Elms Lane, Dikerdem knocked on one ter weekday morning and the gardens were empty. I could see cool door which was opened by a woman in her forties. She had a climbing shapes for children, but no children. familiar story: “My son, he’s in his early twenties, he’s got two jobs A sign read: “Strictly residents only. Quiet hours: 4pm to 8am. and he can’t move out of this flat, he lives with me. He’s totally Strictly no pets except for access. Play area hours: 8.30am to 5 THE NOWHERE NEIGHBOURHOOD PROSPECT © BATTERSEA POWER STATION DEVELOPMENT COMPANY DEVELOPMENT STATION POWER © BATTERSEA

8.30pm April to October, 8.30am to 5.30pm November to March. can even be legally liable if someone trips on a paving stone or Children up to 10 years to be accompanied at all times. No access something. There are grumblings: can’t we just fence this off?” into water features. No ball games.” In many of these developments, public thoroughfares are pri- Further east along the Thames, next to Vauxhall Bridge, is vately owned. City Hall and the area around it, the office blocks, St George’s Wharf, one of the first big new developments, built cafés, restaurants, the sunken amphitheatre and coloured light almost 15 years ago. It is a massif of a building, a thick wall along fountains, are owned by the Kuwaiti government. Private security the river with square-cut towers, gull wing roofs and hospital- guards monitor the King’s Cross development. green tinted windows. It has twice been named “worst building When I put this issue to Adams and Govindia, they played in the world” by Architects’ Journal. On the pedestrianised street down concerns. Adams pointed out the quality of the design level is a Pret a Manger, a gym, a large pub-restaurant and sev- and materials of the City Hall plaza—“amazing granite paving.” eral estate agents. Govindia said the private management company would be paying I met a member of the St George Wharf residents’ association for the maintenance of the site. I told him that I had seen security to ask him how he liked living there. “What sold it for us was the guards at King’s Cross telling a homeless man to move on, and river views.” He and his wife have a three-bedroom apartment asked about the overlapping jurisdiction between police and pri- on the tenth floor with floor-to-ceiling windows, but there is not vate security and accountability. much storage space, so they use the small single bedroom as a “I think no skateboarding rules or no cycling, we [the coun- closet. I asked him about atmosphere and amenities. St George cil] impose them. But as you point out, we impose them after Wharf has 30 retail and commercial units and he told me there public discourse and debate. In these instances [on privately had been problems with the noise. Owners of apartments buy owned developments] they can be just imposed.” He talked them on 999-year leases. Ownership of the land—and not just the about children and ball games and turning a blind eye to land the building is on, but the site, which includes the river path, cyclists, and then said, “I think you’re right to raise it and in gardens and access roads—is retained by the developer. This is many ways it is a challenging phenomenon.” common to most new large London developments built on indus- Developers own the infrastructure, but they also control the trial wasteland. Ownership of the 40 acres of the power station tone and tenor of the neighbourhood. They decide what kind of site—the roads, the river path, the pedestrian concourses and shops and restaurants get leases, whether the pedestrian pre- park—will be retained by the Malaysian consortium who will, as cincts are dominated by chains or, in the case of the power station many developers do, turn the maintenance of the site over to a site, they encourage up-market retailers. But then again, com- management company. munity management has been practised by the big estates like Section 106 agreements stipulate that roads and paths must be the Grosvenor and the Portman in central London for centuries. maintained and kept open to the public. But what about by-laws? Govindia said that in the long term it was better for a developer Noisy pub crowds, cyclists, dogs, children playing? “It grates with to be the landowner because “he becomes part of the commu- a few people,” the St George’s Wharf resident told me. “After all nity and therefore contributes to shaping the community. For they are paying for the maintenance of these public areas, they our area that’s going to have 25 years of their activity I think it’s PROSPECT THE NOWHERE NEIGHBOURHOOD 6

An artist’s impression of the power station site: “Will these shiny new developments take off or be colonised by squatters?” helpful.” Along the construction site of the Nine Elms Lane global city with a stable financial and political system, has become there is a giant new Waitrose, the only place to buy milk within seen as a safe and appreciating asset. 10-minutes’ walk; Flanagan’s, the local pub, had been bought by “Flats are a commodity you can buy and sell,” Bishop told me, Austrian developers and its future is unclear. “and therefore there is a lot of speculation, there are a lot of over- seas investors. Then there’s the influx of Russian money, Middle t the end of St George’s Wharf is the Vauxhall Tower, Eastern, Chinese. Every kind of money.” 50 storeys high, the tallest residential building in New developments are particularly attractive to overseas buy- London and short-listed for the Carbuncle Cup in ers. And overseas buyers are particularly attractive to develop- 2014 (the prize given annually by Building Design ers. Hudson said he reckoned between 60 and 80 per cent of new Amagazine to the “ugliest building in the UK completed in the build units were bought by overseas buyers. Real estate agencies last 12 months”). A Guardian exposé discovered that two thirds track the numbers of foreign buyers but don’t necessarily publish of the apartments were foreign owned and that a Russian sena- their reports because it’s politically awkward. Developments are tor paid £51m for a five-storey penthouse. The lower floors had increasingly being built to be sold off-plan to institutional inves- been bought by “a former Nigerian minister, a Kurdish oil mag- tors, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. “Investment nate, an Egyptian snack-food mogul, an Indonesian banker, a grade space,” as one former developer put it to me, smaller rooms Uruguayan football manager and a former Formula 1 racing that bang against the minimum regulatory allowances, with an driver.” At night most of the lights were out. emphasis on location and transport links. The issue of foreign ownership and of empty apartments, The first tranche of 865 units in the Battersea Power Station “safe deposit boxes in the sky,” as Bishop put it to me, is as con- site sold out in a week when it was put on the market in 2013. tentious as it is difficult to quantify. Title deeds are in the pub- Between 10 and 15 per cent were quickly flipped for profit. Sales lic realm, but tracking down the nationality of an owner behind of subsequent tranches have been more sluggish. UK stamp duty layers of holding companies is tricky. The St George’s Wharf hikes, variations in Singaporean mortgage rates, changes to for- resident told me he thought “probably 50 per cent of this devel- eign investment laws in China, Brexit wobbles, currency fluctu- opment is, at most times, unoccupied. But there’s just no way to ations, the falling pound, all affect different prospective buyers know the number for sure.” in different ways. The superheated market in central London of The complexities of the real estate market defy any easy two years ago has cooled, but Rob Tinknell, the CEO of the Bat- explanation. I tried to unpick some of the figures with Neal Hud- tersea Power Station Development Company remained sanguine son, a housing market analyst who spent 11 years with one of the when he spoke to Property Week magazine last June. The Malay- big estate agents and has recently set up shop on his own. “I’ve sian Consortium, by all accounts, has deep pockets and can wait spent my career trying to understand how it functions and oper- out what industry insiders have dubbed “Nine Elm Disease” by ates,” he told me. “The longer I am at it the less I understand.” holding back tranches of apartments. Prices have continued, more or less, their steep climb over two I visited a two-bedroom show home for the Frank Gehry generations. In the process, property in London, a burgeoning building with a glassed balcony they called a winter garden. 7 THE NOWHERE NEIGHBOURHOOD PROSPECT

It’s the kind of assumption that allowed banks to rely on gov- ernment bailouts. Hudson said you could almost see the moment when George Osborne realised how integral rising house prices were to the British economy when prices went flat two or three years ago. The then Chancellor reportedly told cabinet back in 2013: “Hopefully we will get a little housing boom and everyone will be happy as property values go up.” The Treasury scrambled to encourage house-buying, through funding for lending, help- to-buy and mortgage guarantees. Hudson said it didn’t matter that not very many people took these up. More important was the message it sent to the market. “They were effectively saying house prices will only go up or stay the same.” Over a generation in Britain, and most starkly in London, the division of haves and have-nots has been between those who got on to the property ladder 20 years ago and those who didn’t and now cannot. “The housing problem is a social problem,” a former developer told me, who seemed as worried as the folks at Shelter about the growing frustration of those locked out of the capital’s cookie jar. Everyone agrees it is unfair, but it’s hard to know what do about it. The government has announced over £3bn to fund new social housing in London. Maybe it will help in a decade or two. Meanwhile, the population of London con- tinues to grow. More people are renting, rents have gone up, wages have not kept pace and housing benefits are being cut. “People are being squeezed out by the housing market,” con- cluded Toby Lloyd at Shelter. “Growing numbers of key workers and even quite well- paid professionals are moving out of Lon- don to do less essential or less productive jobs in places where

they can afford a home. What’s the long-term impact on Lon- COMMONS © WOJSYL/WIKIMEDIA St George’s Wharf, Vauxhall: twice voted “worst building in the don going to be?” world” by readers of Architects’ Journal Property development is a long-term proposition, buffeted by the changing winds of finance, politics and demographics; It had an open-plan kitchen and was sleek and chic, but not it is subject to unintended consequences. But so is social hous- very generous for £1m. Over and over again I asked analysts and ing policy. Thirty years after right-to-buy, housing associations developers: who can afford to live in these glass boxes? Because —privately-run non-profit organisations that took over large even if they are being bought by foreigners for investment pur- amounts of local government housing stock—are going into the poses, they will need to be rented and how many professionals private rental sector, buying units in new developments off-plan are there in London who can pay the kind of sums that these just like other institutional investors, and renting them at mar- kind of capital values would require? And, I kept asking, who ket prices. Profits from this essentially subsidise their afforda- wants to live in these glass boxes? Because for all the high-end ble housing. Genius financing or a tightening noose? Will social swanky concierge serviced mega-bucks buildings, many of the housing become dependent on a speculative property price bub- new blocks are being squeezed for as many units as developers ble—whether through housing association private investments can get permission for. Interestingly, everyone agreed with me or through the Section 106 obligations of private developers— that many of the new development flats seemed expensive and even as the need for social housing grows because of ever rising mingy and that they themselves wouldn’t want to live in them; prices? Will these shiny happy new developments fill up with but no one had a good answer as to who would. mysterious numbers of people who can afford them, or will they Developers are fond of saying that they are at the mercy of bankrupt their developers and be colonised by squatters? And the market just like everyone else—that they are “price takers what happens if, instead of gentle sine wave market corrections, not price makers.” But it’s a fallacy that increasing the supply of the bubble really bursts? housing reduces the price if the extra homes are being bought for “London is probably capable of absorbing these develop- speculation and not to be lived in; partly because it’s not in a devel- ments,” Bishop told me. “I live in a house that was built by a devel- oper’s interest to build so many units that the price goes down. oper in 1830 who went bust and it was subdivided into slums and now it’s a nice area. London will recover. London will eventually ondon, like much of Britain, has got so used to ever-ris- take over, like bindweed, absorbing, smothering.” ing house prices that it has been hard-wired into our national economics, our investments, our futures, our Download Prospect’s new podcast, Headspace, from pensions, as if it were somehow a certainty, as safe as iTunes or soundcloud.com/prospect-magazine houses.L Hudson, the housing analyst, said: “There is a consensus Wendell Steavenson, Simon Jenkins and Paul Hilder that prices can’t fall in nominal terms because that would cause join Tom Clark to discuss London’s housing crisis, problems right across the economy, from individuals with their the frailty of the Union, and the way that the web is own circumstances, to bank debt secured against property.” upending politics everywhere